I arose this morning to the beginnings of the week of independence celebrations in Chile (the actual date falling on the 18th but festivities proceeding before and after several days), eerily floating up through the cerros from the harbor. Valparaiso was quiet save for the deep-throated blasts of the foghorns on all the cargo ships and naval vessels in the bahia. It was truly a sound like I have never heard before — at first I thought it was just part of my early-morning dreaming, but was disabused of that notion after a good half-hour of rhythmic horn-calls, weaving in and out of harmony and dissonance. Throaty calls of commerce, pubescent and uniformed calls to arms, all shouting the same independencia song. What fun it must be to have been manning one of those horns, reaching deep into the hills in an orchestrated, controlled cacophony, silencing even the unsilenceable braying of the Valpo dogs. The stairs rang with sound, and I wondered why true patriotism was such a hard-sought virtue for us Americans.

Maybe it is because our celebration of independence has more to do with cheap explosions, and less to do with sound.

Predestination being an antiquated and, in my view, simplistic way of explaining positions in life, I have brought myself to the farthest frontiers of the south-western hemisphere, this country that calls itself an island, for it is bounded on one side by the rugged Andes, one side by the most parched desert in the world, another side by Antarctica and the other by the vast Pacific.  And here I am, out in bliss, deep in love, wide in adventure and tucked up into the colorful hills of Valparaiso.